Secret Ceremonies: A Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond - Hardcover

A candid, often startling memoir of the author's life as a Mormon wife. Though Laake is now a professional journalist, she was raised in a Mormon family and sent to Brigham Young University with one paramount aim: to find and marry ``a faithful Mormon man.'' Without such a marriage, plus the guidance that only a devout husband could provide, she would ``be denied access to the highest level of Mormon heaven''--just one of the many unusual aspects of the emphatically patriarchal religion that Laake reveals here. Moreover, the author intended to wed not any man but ``the One''- -the marriage partner predestined by God--and when she began to doubt that one narrow-minded but extraordinarily persistent suitor, Monty Brown, was the One, Monty and Laake's own brother rushed to her side to exorcise ``the devil'' that had invaded her soul. Laake married Monty in an arcane ceremony whose esoteric details are zestfully described here; pledged to wear ``garments'' (a kind of sanctified nightgown) for the rest of her life; and began what most Americans would consider a bizarre life that included the recycling of condoms through vigorous washing. Within nine months, the naturally free-spirited author asked for a divorce and began--under the close (and, by her account, sexually obsessed) scrutiny of male church authorities--a painful odyssey of self-liberation that included two further marriages, two nervous breakdowns with hospitalization, and the slow recognition of her worth as a woman. Throughout, Laake tends toward emotionally colored, often awkward, writing (``on her first engagement: ``Soon we had created a huge, gay, snowballing ritual of congratulations that sometimes shouted down my fears'') that admirably avoids rancor but that evinces few good words for the church (``the hollow moan of dogma'') she's left behind. By no means objective, then, but, still, an affectingly personal look into the well-guarded citadel of Mormondom. (First serial to Cosmopolitan) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Laake, raised as a strict Mormon, was taught from childhood that Mormon men were "priesthood holders" anointed with the authority to act for God on earth, and that her entrance into heaven could be assured only if she married a Mormon man who would be her master. As a 19-year-old sophomore at Brigham Young University, she became a Mormon wife. Laake's heartfelt record of this disastrous first marriage and the years of struggle that followed is at once autobiography and an expose of the repressive patriarchalism of the Mormon church. After her divorce, for example, Laake found that although her ex-husband retained his religious privileges, she was banned from the temple and condemned by Mormon elders. Torn between her loyalty to herself and to her church's teachings, she plunged into a second Mormon marriage; it, too, failed, and led to a mental breakdown. Laake, now executive managing editor of the New Times magazine chain, writes that she has emerged from her experiences as an independent woman, no longer in thrall to religious dogma. This is a haunting and candid memoir.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.